Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende - TLC Book Tour

Publication Date: April 2011

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: Paperback, 480pp

ISBN-13: 9780061988257

ISBN: 0061988251

 

 

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité — known as Tété — is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.
When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride — but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.
Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tété and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances.


My thoughts:

The first thing that came to mind when I received this book and looked at the summary was "this is not a book I would normally pick up to read".  I'm very picky at times.

I have a love for books, for reading, but not all genres, like I've said many times before......but still I don't like to judge a book by it's cover, so to speak.

I don't mind reading something that is out of my norm because I've often found that some of my favorites have been exactly those books which I didn't think I would enjoy to begin with.

Isabel Allende is a phenomenal writer, I have read one of her books before and I remember that I found her writing to be so fluid, so brilliantly done that I didn't feel like I was reading a book, it was as if I had been transported into the setting and became part of the story.

For that alone I enjoyed this story, it does completely take me out of my comfort zone.  The backdrop for this story is 1800's in Haiti and the main character is Tete, a slave girl who is the product of an African mother and a White Sailor who sells her into slavery.  We follow her story as she wants more for herself, as she struggles with her daily life and always holds on to the hope that one day she will be free to do what she wants.

I did end up really enjoying the story and if anything it just reiterated the fact that I need to branch out and try different genres.

About the Author

 http://www.isabelallende.com/.

For more reviews on Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende, check out the tour stops here.

 TLC Book Tours provided a proof copy of this book for review purposes. All opinions are mine alone.